Raising Rabbits is a Hare-raising Business

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With the meat situation what it is and the economy in a turmoil, now is a good time to consider the rabbit business. The best way I know to put good food on the table and a few dollars in your pocket, without a large investment. The profits can come in many ways: You can sell the urine for laboratory use, the manure for fertilizer or worm growing, even the feet for good luck charms. Meat, however, is by far the most important product.

What follows is a mini-manual that tells how to get started on a shoestring, without the costly items the so-called experts say you should have. I'll try to cover all phases of a new operation and to help the novice avoid pitfalls that aren't mentioned in books or other guides to this subject. Nevertheless, experience is still the best teacher.

A RABBIT BARN

The hare-raising business is adaptable to any location. Many owners use sheds, backyards, and old barns as sites for rabbit warrens (a high-class word for an area of pens).

My herd is kept in a barn which I built-by the hit-and-miss method-especially for that purpose. The structure is 16 feet wide and 24 feet long, and was constructed from used and inexpensive material at a cost of less than $200. The roof rises to 12 feet at the center and slopes to 8-foot sides. Since rabbits do best in semidarkness, there are only three small windows (cut high in the walls, above the four-foot level). On the back side-which faces south-a hinged, 10-inch-wide board runs the length of the building about four feet from the ground. This flap is raised and propped open during the summer. The opposite wall includes a Dutch door with a 36-inch fan in its lower section to move the air up and out.

The building has a dirt floor a must, to absorb the urine. This holds down odors and makes cleaning much easier. Any other type of surface has to be washed every day and is too much trouble.

Here in the deep South (I live in Alabama), no heat is required in such a shelter if the times of breeding ate controlled. If any supplemental warmth were needed I'd use a homemade drip-type stove that burns used motor oil just enough to keep the temperature above freezing. This fuel is still readily obtainable and-so far-quite cheap.

My building houses 15 does and 3 bucks. Only 2 mates are really needed, and the old one-having seen better days-will soon become sausage. The animals' pellet feed (available at any farm supply store) is kept in garbage cans to protect it from rats and other varmints. .

In one front corner of the barn is a butchering table built of a double thickness of 1" X 6" lumber. It's 36 inches wide and 48 long, and slopes gently to a wooden chute at one end so that all remains can be dumped into a large bucket and fed to chickens or togs or buried for fertilizer.

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